Agenda
Draft as of 22 September

Agenda in Word format
Agenda in PDF format

Sunday night, 19 October

7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Informal get-together at the LaoFanDien Hotel

Monday, 20 October

8:30 am to 9:30 am

Introductions by CMA, NCAR, NSF, and Shanghai city officials
(Venue is away from hotel)

9:30 am to 10:15 am

Why this meeting?

Roundtable introductions

10:15 am to 10:30 am

ISDR Overview of the Bonn Early Warning Systems Conference (16-18 October 2003)

10:30 am to 11:00 am

Break

11:00 am to 11:45 am

Brief discussion of types of EWS

In space (global, regional, national, local)
In time (quick onset, slow onset change; frequent, infrequent)
In function (food, energy, water, health, safety, terror; threat to life, property, environment)
In hazard (weather, climate, health, geo-hazard, terrorism)

11:45 a.m. to 12:30 pm

Aspects of EWSs: The Basics

How early is early? What constitutes a warning? What is encompassed in an EW system?
Goals of an EWS?
Does early warning involve creating effective preparedness?
EWS as a balance among costs, timeliness, and reliability

["Early warning systems are only as good as their weakest link. They can, and frequently do, fail for a number of reasons". (Andrew Maskrey www.unisdr.org/unisdr/docs/early/local/structure.htm]

["Some accept a vague sense of future conflict while others demand a precise prediction that includes the scale, nature, timing, and location of the violence"
(W. Dorn, n.d., www.rmc.ca/academic/gradrech/dorn26_e.html]

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Lunch at LaoFanDien Hotel

2:00 pm to 2:45 pm

Early Warnings in a Changing World

Brief presentations of interest in EWS by participants (some are focused on climate-related areas and an overview of potential value of hydro-meteorological early warning systems)

Agriculture (FAO crop assessments)
Water (quantity, quality)
Health (e.g., SARS; epidemics)
Public safety (slides, epidemics, floods)
Fisheries (overfishing; overcapacity)
Complex humanitarian crises

Climate change (greenhouse gas emissions)
Extreme meteorological events (EMEs)
Drought (rural, urban; agricultural, hydrologic, meteorological)
Desertification
Floods (flash floods; slow onset)
Tropical storms· Dust storms
Pests (e.g., locust)

2:45 pm to 3:30 pm

EWS in Theory and in Practice: Foreseeability, Transparency and Accountability

["Unfortunately, taking available warning seriously always carries the 'penalty' of deciding what to do about it…The main problem is mustering the political will to both listen and act" (Edwin Bakker, "Early warning by NGOs in conflict areas")]

Are early warnings the same as forecasts? Projections? Trends? Risk assessments?
Should there be "accountability" for early warnings?
What ought to be vs. what is the value of an EWS?
What are the reasons that early warnings are often ignored?

3:30 pm to 4:00 pm

Break

4:00 pm to 4:45 pm

Expectation for Early Warning Systems

Do we expect too much from an EWS?
Hype vs. Hope using EWS. Should we lower our expectations about what they can do for society?

4:45 pm to 5:30 pm

Sustainable Development, EWSs, and Politics

EWS and sustainable development: What is the link?
Is there a role for disaster diplomacy?
["Early warning is not a politically netrual act" (Schodt and Gerner, p. 22)]
What are the political aspects of early warnings and EWSs?

["Early warning systems should, thus, be seen as a 'last line of defense' dealing with unmanaged risks. They must, therefore, be developed as an important component of much wider national risk management and reduction strategies" (A. Maskrey).]

Tuesday, 21 October

8:30 am to 9:15 am

Reviewing the Notion of 'Lessons Learned'

Are lessons learned with regard to existing or preceding early warnings?
Are we learning lessons or just identifying them?

["Because history moves at high speed in such places [Brazilian rainforest], it has a persistent habit of leaping ahead of our analytical grasp, rendering obsolete hard won conclusions that now seem to apply only to a previous period" (Joao Campari, PhD thesis, U of Texas, n.d.)]

9:15 am to 10:00 am

The Politics of Early Warning

Warning needs vary from user to user (governments, corporations, individuals, cultures).
Do we need more than one EWS to tailor them to various user needs?
Do we need more than one official EW?

["Decision makers are often reluctant to act, and the problem is one of publicity not probability".]

["The disruption of normal NGO operations is in itself an early warning signal that conditions are deteriorating…NGOs are sometimes the only sources of information…" (E. Bakker)]

10:00 pm to 10:30 am

Break

10:30 am to 11:15 am

The Cascade of EWSs

El Niño is a hazard spawner

[(e.g., El Niño forecasts warn regions about local and regional hazards, sparking other early warning systems to issue their alerts.]

[Handout of major lessons from EW for political and military conflicts (based on S. Schmeidl)

["It is hard to measure the success of an early warning and conflict prevention". "There is a tendency to point to the abundance of failures and become cynical about early warning and conflict prevention" (p.41). ]

11:15 am to 12:45 pm

What is SWOC?

SWOC (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, constraints) assessment for the following aspects of an EWS:

1) selection of indicators
2) monitoring indicators
3) issuing the warning
4) communicating the warning
5) receiving the warning
6) believing the warning
7) acting on the EW
8) consistent funding stream for and EWS

[Schodt and Gerner (1998) identified 6 ways that CHC early warning might fail: strategic deception; conventional concealment; institutional ignorance; reflexive reaction; exogenous shifts; systematic complexity. They noted that the most common exogenous factor causing EWS to fail is environmental stress.]

12:45 to 1:45 pm

Lunch

Free afternoon

Visit to CMA; Shanghai

8:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Hollow Square at LaoFanDien Hotel - TOPIC Related to China and its Use of EWSs.

Wednesday, 22 October

8:45 am to 10:00 am

SWOC Revisited (continued discussion)

Small group findings about SWOC aspects presented and discussed

10:00 am to 10:30 am

Break

10:30 am to 11:15 am

Reliability and Credibility of an EW

How to deal with probability?
Is the notion of "Foreseeability" useful for early warning?
How can one measure the effectiveness of an EWS: Absence of event, impacts, deaths, destruction when compared to previous similar events?
Quantitative and qualitative input to an EWS?
Can EWS use anecdotal information?
Are 'signals' useful to detect changes?
What might be the role of indigenous early warning indicators?

What types of indicators are useful? (quantitative, qualitative, anecdotal, scenarios)

[In politics, the quantitative input is secondary to the qualitative input (Schodt and Gerner, 1998, p. 28).]

11:15 am to 12:00 pm

Communicating What to Whom?

Whom to warn about what and when?
Does color matter?

[Communicating early warning system output: to whom? By whom? How? When? (How to reach the affected, e.g., poor, single-parent homes, rural, lacking technology)

["The mere existence of information does not mean it will be available in a timely fashion, that it will be interpreted correctly or that it will be acted upon" (p. 8).]

["Drought is when the government tells you there is no water."]

["I don't know anything about different types of disaster or about the signals -- I only know that the danger is really dangerous. I also listen to the garoom garooom. (Howell, as quoted in 2003)]

12:00 to 1:30 pm

Lunch

1:30 am to 2:15 pm

Institutional Factors: Bureaucratic Responses to EWSs

What is the role of bureaucratic responsibilities (responsibility is based on the word 'response')?

[There is a need, according to Schmeidl, to overcome an institution's mandate limitations. Schrodt and Gerner (1998) have identified various institutional constraints on using EW issued from outside its own organization (p. 3) and also noted that, for a variety of reasons, "institutions ignore evidence" (p.9) which is "a major source of early warning failure".]

2:15 pm to 3:00 pm

"The Role of the Media and NGOs in EWS"

The globalizing aspects of international media reporting of EW (i.e., El Niño).
Does this tend to limit the 'deniability' of decision makers?

3:00 pm to 3:30 pm

Break

3:30 pm to 4:15 pm

An EW for New EWS-Related Developments?

the value of a "positive EWS" for changes and progress in monitoring, detection, technology, technique, understanding of hazard (or EWS-related warnings)]

Thursday, 23 October

9:00 am to 9:45 am

"Late Lessons, Early Warnings": An Open Discussion

"discounting the past": Is there a time bias for 'lessons learned' -- "that worked then but this is now"? Things have changed"?
What is the value of the "precautionary principle"? Are there thresholds for enacting the precautionary principle?

9:45 am to 10:30 am

Early Warning Capacity Building